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Berklee College of Music and Southern New Hampshire University recently announced they will offer the nation’s first MBA in music business that is entirely online.

Berklee said in a statement that the SNHU College of Online and Continuing Education and Berklee Online will begin offering classes toward the degree this fall.

“There’s been a massive shift over the past dozen years in the music industry, from an industry that was very much top-down driven and difficult to break into to one that is much more friendly to disruption, innovation, and fresh ideas,” Debbie Cavalier, vice president of online education at Berklee, said in the statement. “The online MBA in music business provides the perfect opportunity to gain a thorough business background that is completely suited to help enterprising students forward the evolution of the new music business.”

Students will be required to take online MBA courses from SNHU, and music business and marketing classes at Berklee, the statement said. The program can be completed in as little as 21 months, and students from anywhere in the world will be eligible.

“Berklee offers a world-class music education, developing award-winning musicians who go on to find great success throughout the industry," SNHU President Paul LeBlanc said in the statement. "We will reinforce that with our long history of business education deeply steeped in those fundamentals that matter regardless of industry sector, the skills that often make the difference between failure and success. That's the critical value-add that Berklee-SNHU graduates will provide when they go out into the market."

Katherine Landergan can be reached at klandergan@globe.com. For campus news updates, follow her on Twitter @klandergan.